In this paper a collection of prototype applications developed by VRT -as part of the ICoSOLE project- are described: Moments, Trademark and the Wall. Together, they form the The Wall of Moments. The aim is to collect valuable usergenerated content, in order to create a near-to live immersive experience for event visitors as well as people who can't attend an event.
THE WALL OF MOMENTS The Wall of Moments consists of three main prototypes: Moments, Trademark and the Wall.
Moments Moments is a mobile app which event participants can use to contribute content (photos or videos) to the production crew. The Moments app was the first prototype of the Wall of Moments and has been iterated several of times already, which makes it the most mature of the three. Especially the field trial at Dranouter Festival (during the summer of 2015) yielded valuable insights.
Based on these learnings, we drew three main conclusions, which are outlined below.
People want instant feedback on their contributed content. They want to know how people value their photo or video and they want control over what happens with it later on. Contributing content should be effortlessly: conditions at an event (e.g. a festival) are not optimal, so there’s no room for fiddling around complex steps to share content; ideally, it should only be one tap away.
Part of the test users are very able to contribute interesting, well-thought-out, creative content, but the majority needs more steering: they need to have an idea of which content you’re looking for. We took these conclusions and overhauled the prototype in time for the European Open Days event in the autumn of 2015. Now, we’re also giving users the results of the video analysis and and feedback based on these results. People are informed when their content is used on the Wall and can opt out of showing it publicly anywhere.
Leading up to the latest event (Science Night), we addressed
the second and third conclusion. We added push notifications,
to be able to contact test users directly to cover
opportunities during an event using UGC. Additionally, we added a
WhatsApp-like [
Lastly, we added a (Facebook-like) live feed of the event to the app to catch up on what’s going on on different spots of the event site.
Trademark To support the new features of the Moments app in the backend, a new app for the production crew was developed as well. Firstly, incoming content needs to be managed in a smart way. During busy periods, a lot of content is contributed simultaneously, and it is essential to find the most interesting content as fast as possible. We deliberately choose not to do the filtering of content completely automatically. An algorithm can’t interpret content like humans do (yet), and we can’t afford to display inappropriate content anywhere. What we can do, however, is using algorithms to sort content in an ingenious way and suggest the best photo or video first. Thus, great content is processed as fast as possible while still leaving the final call to the director. Secondly, interactivity plays a big role in this story. Therefor, we ambition a closer contact between the contributors and the production crew. On top of the WhatsApp-based messaging tool, which is also built into Trademark, it’s possible to contact a (sub)group of the Moments’ users using push notifications. A crew member can open up a map of the event location and select a certain area to get an overview of the users who are currently there. Subsequently, he can request a photo/video, or request to participate in a poll. Active users are marked in a different color as well.
Lastly, contributed content (photo/video/poll) can be posted
directly on the event’s social media, or can be sent to the Wall.
The Wall
The Wall is a mosaic representation of content, and is
displayed on big screens placed at the event. This mosaic –or
matrix– is a constantly refreshing feed of the latest and most
interesting content.
TECHNOLOGIES
We developed the Wall of Moments prototypes as web
applications to support as much (mobile) devices as possible,
using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. Moments and
Trademark are also wrapped in a native container using Apache
Cordova [
DEMO CONTENT The demo uses a selection of content originating from Austrian Science Night, a field test organised in Austria on April 22nd 2016. To illustrate the liveliness when used near-to-live, the prototypes will be showcased live as well.
CONCLUSION AND FURTHER RESEARCH The Wall of Moments is a range of prototypes in which use cases defined in the ICoSOLE project are implemented. Experiments during the summer of 2016 shall provide further insights into improvements of applications for end users in terms of usability, design and features. We intend to enhance these prototypes further during these field trials by adding even more data sources. For example, we consider attaching proximity sensors to the screens displaying the Wall, to personalize what’s shown (based on closeby users). This could strengthen event engagement even more, and yield a richer experience both for event visitors and people following at home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is part of the ICoSOLE project, funded by the European Commission through the 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 610370.